The UK's Cuadrilla Resources will only resume hydraulic fracturing -- or fracking -- at its flagship UK shale gas site once it and the industry regulator are confident that "technical questions have been satisfactorily answered" following a major earth tremor last week.
In a statement at the weekend, Cuadrilla said fracking remained suspended at the Preston New Road site in northwest England while its technical team worked with the regulator to address a "number of questions raised following the recent seismic events."
A tremor measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale was triggered on August 26 -- just 11 days after Cuadrilla resumed fracking at the site on August 15.
Under the UK's "traffic light" regulatory system, fracking must be halted if the work causes earth tremors of morethan 0.5 on the Richter scale.
Cuadrilla said it did not have a date for operations to restart, adding that it would not be until both the company and the regulator were confident the risk of a repeat occurrence had been "properly mitigated."
RESOURCES SETBACK
The UK shale gas industry remains in its infancy, and the size of the latest tremor is bound to be a setback for the sector that was already dealt a major blow in mid-August when new research suggested the UK's recoverable shale gas reserves could be up to five times lower than previous estimates suggested.
The research, supported by the British Geological Survey (BGS), said economically recoverable reserves in the Bowland Shale -- the country's most prospective shale gas area -- could be equivalent to less than 10 years of current UK gas consumption.
In 2013, the BGS estimated that the Bowland Shale alone could hold up to 1,329 Tcf (37.6 trillion cu m) of gas in place, which with a recovery rate of 10% would mean recoverable reserves of as much as 3.8 Tcm, enough to meet the UK's current gas demand for almost 50 years.
Cuadrilla said at the weekend it wanted to continue work at Preston New Road with the aim of establishing a domestic energy supply "that the UK really needs."
"The Bowland Shale as a whole could be a very important resource for Lancashire and the UK and we would like to continue with our work to prove this," it said.
Cuadrilla and other shale gas operators including Ineos have complained about the restrictions on fracking, sayingthe regulations are too strict and are hampering investment in the sector.
